1Password releases first form auto-filler for iPhone, touch

No, the iPhone hasn't gained an official copy and paste feature yet. But …

We spoke with Agile Web Solutions' Dave Teare at Macworld '08 and learned that 1Password, the premiere password and identity management app for Mac OS X, was about to bring form auto-filling to the iPhone and iPod touch. Unfazed by the lack of a true iPhone SDK, Teare and his team gave Ars Technica a demonstration of their clever bookmarklet that can be used to auto-fill web pages on the iPhone with any account info saved in 1Password on your Mac.

The bookmarklet encrypts all of your login information with Strong Cryptography (448-bit Blowfish encryption), and it requires your custom password each time you want to auto-fill a form. The demo looked great, and it caught the attention of anyone disappointed by the iPhone's lack of copy and paste features, not to mention MobileSafari's inability to remember even login usernames. About the only downside of the demo we saw was that it was just an internal demo build, not quite ready for public consumption.

Fortunately, the day has come for Agile Web Solutions to unleash the world's first form auto-filler for the iPhone and iPod touch (which we will refer to as just "iPhone" in the rest of this post). 1Password users can now run a Check for Updates process from the app's menu (making sure that "include beta versions" is enabled in preferences) to grab the 2.5.10 beta. Installing the bookmarklet is as simple as hitting the Sync to iPhone button in 1Password, which prompts you to create a custom password specifically for this new bookmarklet and the previous one that acts as a portable reference for all your 1Password account information (secured with the same encryption as this auto-filler). Once you create your custom password, 1Password places both bookmarklets in Safari's main Bookmarks menu, and you can move it wherever you want in your bookmark structure by organizing your Safari bookmarks before syncing your iPhone.

Once your iPhone and the new bookmarklets are synced, you simply need to visit a web site for which you have one or more logins stored in 1Password. Don't even bother tapping in one of the account forms on the site—you simply need to pull up your iPhone's bookmarks and choose "1Password Logins," which will present a slick, smokey JavaScript pop-up containing a password entry form to unlock the bookmarklet, an auto-submit option (enabled by default), and any account entries stored for the current site. Simply enter your password and tap on the account you want to sign in with. If your password is correct and you left the auto-submit feature enabled, you'll be signed in right away. If your password is wrong, you'll be presented with a warning stating as such and the ability to reenter the password to get on your way.

In our tests of this impressive use of a bookmarklet, the first iPhone form auto-filler works surprisingly well. We used it on a number of sites, including some for which we had more than one login, and the bookmarklet functioned flawlessly, logging us in every time. One drawback we can see to this bookmarklet—a lack of any way to sync login information entered on the iPhone itself—is probably out of Agile Web Solutions' hands until the official iPhone SDK lands.

For now, this bookmarklet can only hold accounts you store in 1Password from your desktop browsers. Accounts you enter for mobile and iPhone-optimized sites on the iPhone itself won't be stored in the bookmarklet, so your best option if you just need some of those accounts to auto-fill would be to use Safari on your desktop to visit the mobile versions of those sites. That way you can enter your login credentials on the desktop, store them in 1Password, then sync a new copy of the bookmarklet the next time you connect your iPhone. Speaking of new bookmarklets though: until Agile Web Solutions implements some kind of auto-sync feature to update your bookmarklet in Safari (or builds a native iPhone component with the SDK), remember to generate a new bookmarklet from time to time to keep your iPhone up to date.

If you haven't tried 1Password yet and want to get in on this iPhone auto-fill action, head over to 1Password.com and download an official demo (remember to check for a beta version right away, however, as betas are not provided at the official download link). If you didn't score a copy of 1Password with MacHeist II over the last couple of weeks, a full license will cost $29.95. 1Password requires Mac OS X 10.4 Tiger or higher, Safari 2.0 or higher, and also works with Firefox 1.5+, Camino 1.0+, OmniWeb 5.5+, DEVONagent 2.0+, and NetNewsWire 2.1+ for all your password and identity management needs.